


Moon Without The Stars

by Tienwashere



Category: Deemo (Video Games), Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Aliens, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, But not exactly, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Minor Character Death, Muteness, Temporary Amnesia, Victor falls from the sky, Yuuri is a mute alien while victor is an amnesiac russian....?, Yuuri is an alien sort of, i wanted to keep the language barrier so, lmao its weird, sort of like the game Deemo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-10
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2018-09-23 09:52:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9650432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tienwashere/pseuds/Tienwashere
Summary: Yuuri learns quite quickly that Earth doesn’t care for strangers.Yuuri has been imprisoned for three years when his best friend dies. From that day on, he vows to escape.One hundred and ninety seven years later, he gives up. His solitude could last for another century, he knows he can’t escape.Then a young man with silver hair and no memories falls from the sky, calling himself Victor and shattering the deafening silence that plagued him for so long.He doesn’t want Victor to die in here with him.





	

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

_Dream_

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

 

He doesn’t even know his _own name_.

 

All he knows is that he is falling.

Falling through the sky.

And he dreads landing.

 

Long, silver hair whips past his face, 

and clouds rush past.

 

He opens his mouth to scream.

 

Then everything goes dark.

 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

_Victor_

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

 

When he wakes, there’s a…man, standing over him.

He’s got raven black hair and gangly limbs and everything about him is dark. White freckles like stars are scattered across his black and indigo skin. A white bow tie adorns his neck. A bow tie, of all things, and he can’t help but smile a little at it when he sees it.

 

Victor decides he’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

 

_So that’s what his name was. He remembered it now._

 

 _Victor_.

 

The man extends a slender hand to help Victor up. He takes it gratefully.

 

He leads Victor into a vast marble rotunda. It’s entirely empty except for a tree growing out of a hole in the cracked marble, having broken through the floor and now extending past the edges of the open roof and into the sky. A shallow pool of water surrounds it, channels bringing water in six different directions

 

“Where am I?” Victor asks.

_Who are you?_

_Who am I?_

_Why can I not remember anything?_

 

The man doesn’t make a sound, only tugs his hand lightly while giving him a mournful look. His eyes are brilliantly warm, and golden brown in color. They are a complete contrast from the rest of his body. 

 

A trace of light in endless darkness.

 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

_Reflection_

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

 

Victor learns pretty quickly that he doesn’t talk.

 

Instead, he communicates in vague hand gestures, and some charades. Whenever Victor offers him a pen, he outright refuses to even touch it. Victor hypothesizes that maybe he’s illiterate, but that wouldn’t make sense. One of the four rooms in his home is a great big library with books and texts in hundreds of different languages.

 

Eventually, Victor finds an old journal. It’s small enough to fit in one’s pocket, but it’s stuffed with papers and clippings and drawings. It’s written in what Victor learns is Thai, so he spends countless hours with a Thai dictionary translating to Russian, the language he seems to feel the most comfortable with.

The journal tells of the adventures of a seemingly cheerful man named Phichit, an explorer who discovers a humanoid creature off the coast of a small town called Hasetsu in Japan. He writes extensively about the creature, whom he calls ‘Yuuri.’ He finds a sketch taped to the next page, of a (man?) who’s skin is marred by dark blues and constellations. He looks up to see the very same man sitting in front of him, reading _Grimm’s Fairy Tales._

“Yuuri?” He speaks softly, cautiously.

The word sends a jolt through the man, and he stares at Victor with a startled expression.

“Yuuri?” He repeats with a bit more confidence. He’s greeted by an enthusiastic nod and an animated smile.

“Yuuri.” Victor smiles and holds out his hand. Yuuri grips it tightly.

 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

_Makkachin_

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

 

A bird flies in through one of the skylights with an injured wing. Yuuri finds it as he’s bringing Victor food and soon, the two of them are trying to set a bird’s wing using a textbook diagram of a bald eagle.

 

The bird is quite large, nearly as big as Victor’s head. It’s feathers are a chocolate brown color, and ruffled down sticks out at every direction. It chirps a great deal as Yuuri tries to carefully bind it’s wing as he’s repeatedly whacked in the face with the bird’s good wing. After the gash heals, Victor walks over to the hole in the sky and lets the bird fly away.

 

Except the bird comes back and decides to roost in Victor’s silver locks. Yuuri looks like he might be smiling.

 

Victor ends up keeping the bird. He names it Makkachin, after a character he finds in a book. He and Yuuri feed it the seeds from the pods that fall off the great tree in the rotunda. It makes a nest from it’s twigs and lives next to Victor’s cot in the library.

 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

_Overture_

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

 

Victor talks to Yuuri about what he remembers (which isn't much anything), and how he feels (which is a lot of things). Yuuri listens intently no matter what he talks about. He seems to understand Japanese the best, and always perks up when Victor speaks to him in broken phrases. English works too, and he seems to get by on Russian. 

 

Of course, Yuuri never actually responds, so Victor isn’t one hundred percent sure he understands anything he says.

Still, talking was better than the silence that dominated the emptiness of Yuuri’s home.

 

“Why do you never speak to me?”

Yuuri jerked at the sudden question, then cast his sad gaze to his feet.

“I’m sorry, I should I not have—?“

Yuuri suddenly grabs his hand and tugs him to his feet, leading him down the third hall.

 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

_Yuuri_

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

 

Now that he’d seen the garden and the library, there were three rooms Victor had yet to discover (Victor didn’t count the bathroom). Yuuri introduces him to the third one on the left.

 

It’s empty, except for a piano in the middle of the room. It’s large, painted a glossy black that jumped out from the pale limestone walls. Yuuri runs his hands over the wood before beckoning Victor to sit with him.

He flips through the pages of sheet music until he comes across a piece with a title was smudged and faded beyond recognition. He can see faint traces of Yuuri’s name scrawled on top, but the rest is a mystery. Slender hands stand stark against the yellowing ivory keys. A simple, but bold melody begins to play.

The music gradually grows more complicated, until it’s a roaring crescendo that makes Victor’s heart swell. The piano whines and creeks in retaliation, but it make no difference. It’s regal and glorious, and Victor is so enraptured that it takes a him a moment to realize Yuuri’s quickly-moving hands are changing color. At first they’re so many colors that Victor can’t concentrate on just one. Then the color fades to an olive brown, which spreads to his arms, neck, and eventually his face. For an instant, Yuuri’s face isn’t a murky sea, marred by clouds and stars and darkness.

 

A young man sits next to him. so very different but still the same in his shy demeanor, and with the same warm eyes. In disbelief, Victor reaches out and grasps one of Yuuri’s hands.

 

“Wait!—“ Yuuri gasps.

 

The next change is sudden, more sudden than the first. The midnight blue and deep violet pigments flood his skin, chasing away the man’s image until they envelope him once more in a starry shroud.

“You…you just spoke.” Victor stammers. Yuuri nods in confirmation, and Victor isn’t sure how to feel.

“…So you _can_ speak?”

Yuuri shakes his head. He takes Phichit’s notebook out of Victor’s hands and turns to a page of messily scrawled music notes with an additional page of annotations.

 

Victor finds the Thai dictionary and begins to translate.

 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

_Philia_

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

 

_Apr 3rd - Whenever Yuuri plays this song, he transforms. I’ve been studying his reactions, and the music seems to trigger the neurons in his brain that allow him to…default, I suppose you could call it. His vocal function returns, and he can control the skin camouflage that his species has developed over millennia of evolution. However the longer he plays, the more tired he gets afterwards. I fear he will push himself too far. — PC_

 

_Apr 21st - Yuuri has been telling me about his people, and what he’s doing on earth. But whenever I bring up his capture, he stops playing and he starts crying. I feel that perhaps it’s best to leave the past in the past for now. He seems far too exhausted anyways. — PC_

 

_Apr 27th - Yuuri played for far too long. Five minutes exhausts him, I can’t imagine what twenty will do. I don’t know if he’s going to wake up this time._

_I think he just wanted to be himself again. — PC_

 

_Apr 30th - I miss hearing his voice. — PC_

 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

_Phichit_

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

 

“What happened to Phichit?” Victor asks after he finishes translating the journal after working for hours on end. Yuuri goes rigid, and Victor panics. This tends to be how talks about sensitive subjects go.

 

Yuuri grabs his hand again and brings him to the fourth room, one that Victor had tried to open but couldn’t. Yuuri gives the door a hard shove.

 

The room was half-filled with mossy marble chunks, and water streams down them into a channel which undoubtedly reaches the moat in the rotunda. A vine full of delicate white flowers stretches across the hill of limestone, and Victor recalls the last entry in Phichit’s journal. The page is smudged and faded, but Victor has a translated copy taped to the back cover.

 

 _“There was an earthquake today, and half of the water room came down. We still have a steady flow to the tree, and the filter is intact, but my leg got banged up pretty bad and we don’t have the supplies to properly bandage it..”_ Victor reads out loud. “Was this…?”

 

Yuuri merely nods his head, then pads over to the ground in front of the flowers. He presses a hand against the smooth marble and a tear escapes. It’s silver, like a shooting star falling down his face.

 

He takes a second journal out of his breast pocket and presses it into Victor’s hands.

 

“…Are you sure?”

 

Yuuri presses his fingertips to his lips before resting them on Victor’s chest.

 

“Okay.”

 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

_Staccato_

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

 

Victor pores over the second journal, drinking in the information. Phichit…fascinates him, his perceptiveness and his sketches. Every detail is always perfect, and it’s effortless. He can imagine everything that Phichit has written about (that is if he hasn’t drawn it already), but there’s a gaping hole in the story. There’s little to no information on where Yuuri came from, who he is, and where they are right now.

So basically, Victor knows nothing of immediate importance.

Victor figures they’re near water, since they have a steady stream of it. Fruit and vegetables grow easily in Yuuri’s garden, but Victor can only narrow down so much from some apples and a miniature waterfall.

 

Makkachin has begun molting, and downy feathers are everywhere. At first, Yuuri seems annoyed, but when he’s running around, trying to catch the stray feathers, Victor sees him smiling.

 

He tries to judge the ages of Phichit’s journals. Of course, he has nothing to compare them to, and it’s not like he knows what year it is, but the books are old, and the paper is damaged and decaying. He imagines Yuuri has been here for quite some time.

Victor can’t even begin to imagine the crippling loneliness.

 

Phichit’s entries seem to get shorter as time goes on. Victor finds a page full of short, disjointed sentences. He translates for hours, trying to decipher what Phichit is trying to say, but it looks like Phichit didn’t have much to work with. The writing is faint, and the paper is practically crumbled. At first, Victor isn’t sure he’s translated it correctly.

 

_January 4th - My ankle isn’t healing. I’m running out of time. Outside? No ladder. Green light today, I think they’re making a rainbow. The mice are nervous. 1092 days here. Eyes up, chin up. Yuuri is trying to find ink. I don’t know how he’s polished the marble so smoothly. They don’t bring medicine. I’m disposable, I suppose. Yuuri tries, but the my leg is beyond him. Time’s nearly up._

 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

_Nine Point Eight_

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

 

 _Yuuri, when you read this, know that I would like to be buried near the ‘waterfall’. While I would never wish for anyone else to be trapped in here like we were, I hope you will not be lonely, and maybe one day you can escape, and you can return to your home. I’ve written a better copy of your song. One day you_ will _be yourself again, or maybe you’ll become something new._

 

_Don’t miss me too much, okay? You’re gonna be just fine._

 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

_Ludus_

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

 

One day, Victor kisses Yuuri.

They’re sitting at the piano, and Yuuri is playing a soft, ephemeral melody. The sheet music rests in Victor’s lap, since Yuuri seems to know it by heart. Several annotations have been made by Phichit, which Victor reads with intent. As the music trickles to a stop, one of the footnotes catches his eye.

 

_September 22nd -Yuuri has made it evident that his species responds enthusiastically to what we call music. But for him, music is as necessary as water is to us. I think that this song is another expression of love. I’m still not sure who or what is is that Yuuri loves, and I cannot judge it by human standards. After all, he is certainly not human. I think he himself is still trying to figure out what love means to him._

 

Yuuri looks over at Victor with a questing expression. Victor leans forward and presses his lips against the bridge of his nose. It’s a kind gesture, and one that feels so vey human. Yuuri returns the gesture by momentarily pressing his own lips against Victor’s. Supernovas explode across his cheeks, and Yuuri realizes that he doesn’t feel so lonely anymore.

 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

_Rainy Memory_

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

 

Victor remembers a young boy.

 

He’s blonde. He has ocean green eyes, at least, they look like the oceans Victor sees in books. But they match the color of shallow seawater.

 

Victor also remembers snow.

 

The memory connects the two, he assumes. But trying to remember it too much makes his head hurt. It makes _him_ hurt. Remembering hurts, and not being able to remember hurts.

Victor feels a sob stuck in his chest. Yuuri watches him worriedly. He sits down next to him and gently brushes his hair out of his face, tentatively wrapping his arms around his shoulders. 

 

Victor lets himself cry, and for the first time since Victor had arrived, it began to rain.

Victor moves his face away from Yuuri’s chest just as a large raindrop dances through the branches of the great tree and smacks Yuuri in the face. The smaller man jumps slightly, and the colliding droplet of the water sends sky blue and bright grey rippling through his body before it fades back to lonely stars.

Yuuri shields him as the rainstorm continues, until he’s a mess of turquoise and grey and shimmering stars. He doesn’t seem to mind though, and Victor rests his head against his collar bone and watches the colors dance across his skin.

Yuuri seems to notice him watching, and furrows his brow in a silent question.

_Is this bad? Am I too strange?_

Victor shakes his head, and hugs him tighter.

 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

_In Regards To Love_

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

 

“I want to see the outside.” Victor murmurs. Yuuri looks up at the skylight wistfully and nods in agreement.

“Why are you still here?”

Yuuri merely sends him a resigned look.

“You’ve never tried to escape?”

Yuuri raises an eyebrow. _Are you kidding me?_

After two hundred years, you’d think he should’ve been able to find a way out. With Phichit’s life on the line he should’ve.

 

He would admit, this prison was far nicer than most. He could cultivate his own food, and he was provided with books and a piano. They were implemented so that they might study his behavior. Still, it didn’t denote the value it has to Yuuri. A piano is a piano, and if he desires to play he will.

 

“I miss freedom. Even if I don’t remember it.” Victor sighs. Yuuri tenses up, and Victor frowns. “What’s wrong?” Yuuri shakes his head, waving his hand dismissively.

“ _Yuuri_ , tell me.” Victor drapes himself across Yuuri’s shoulders.

Yuuri turns to look at him. _Would you be leaving me then?_

Victor’s eyes widen and he hugs Yuuri to his chest. “Don’t be silly. I’m not leaving without you.”

Yuuri responds with a sad look, then returns to his novel.

 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

_Voice_

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

 

 _December 8th_ \- _It seems Yuuri’s vocal loss is tied to this prison. His species has a different response than humans do, and it seems they have found a certain isotope that emits radioactive waves that block mind-to-vocal transmission. It seems similar to a gamma ray at a glance, only it doesn’t have the same effect. The element probably has a half life of thousands of years, and while Yuuri’s lifespan is long, he won’t outlive it. I don’t seem to be affected. I am unable to identify it, considering my knowledge of nuclear chemistry comes from an old textbook in the library. I think Yuuri is able to communicate from far away through light and sound waves, and by using the signal to disrupt them, they’ve inadvertently taken away his ability to speak as well as disrupted his camouflaging mechanisms. But if he hits the keys of the piano just so, he can force his body generate a protective shield around his brain, and he is free, if only momentarily. —PC_

 

_December 16th - My first hypothesis was wrong. The isotope’s radiation affects humans too. I figured it out when I started to think of my family this morning, and I couldn’t remember who they were. I’ve been so focused on this place and on Yuuri that I didn’t even notice I’d forgotten._

_Most of my long term memories have vanished, and I can only remember bits and pieces. Yuuri tries to repeat everything I’ve told him, but charades can be difficult. The only pen and paper here is my journal and my pen. He refuses to write in my journal, much less mark up one of our precious library books. I think that after awhile, our brain builds up an immunity to the rays, but our memories are still trapped until the damage is healed, which it won’t under the constant radiation._

_His speech and my memories are gone, so now he plays my songs while I sing his lyrics at the piano._

_I suppose it could be far worse. —PC_

 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

_Countdown_

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

 

The fifth room is entirely covered in writing. There’s smudges of charcoal on the walls. Words and sentences stretch around the room, covering the marble in symphonies of poetry and drawings. Brightly colored clothing is scattered about, now dusty and faded with time, as well as hundreds of drawings.

 

This must be Phichit’s room.

 

Victor knows Yuuri doesn’t have a designated sleeping spot, or if the man ever sleeps for more than three hours. But even without that information, the muddled Thai and English writing is a dead giveaway.

 

Yuuri tugs his hand, and makes a simple gesture before pointing at a bar of music on the left wall.. _Piano?_

Victor nods. “Yes.”

 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

_Collapse_

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

 

Yuuri teaches Victor to play a song in a duet with him. It’s titled ‘In Regards to Love’. There are two parts to it. One is intense and passionate, while the other is soft and melodic. They can be played as two separate songs, but if put together just so…

An intricate melody rings out, bouncing off the walls and filling the room with noise. Victor stumbles over it for the first few minutes, but after a while the two songs fuse together in harmony. Yuuri smiles wider than he’s ever seen.

 

Victor stops abruptly as he hears a rumbling noise. It’s quiet at first, but eventually grows louder, until it surrounds them.

“…Yuuri?” Victor turns to look at the other man. His eyes are wide, shock and curiosity playing across his face.

And of course, unadulterated terror.

He grabs Victor’s hand and _runs._

 

It seems that there’s nowhere to run to.

The marble rotunda is coming down around them in huge chunks, the tree in the center is dying, and Makkachin shrieks before being hit by rubble and is sent tumbling through the sky.

“Makka!” Victor yells, but Yuuri stops him from running after the bird as a chunk of limestone lands a mere foot in front of them. Victor is pretty sure they won’t make it out alive.

Yuuri’s prison is falling apart around them. His prison cage is broken. And they were going to die inside it.

 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

_Pragma_

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

 

A hole in the wall. Escape. A window of opportunity as marble crumbled into the ocean.

“Yuuri, we have to go!”

Yuuri takes one last look at the rubble before nodding. They run to the edge, ready to jump.

 

They find they’re surrounded, by miles of crashing waves in every direction and a one hundred foot drop.

“This, this is the ocean?” Victor asks.

Yuuri nods, frozen in fear.

“It never looked quite so angry in the books.” Victor pursed his lips. “Well, let’s go—“

Yuuri grabs his arm to stop him from jumping, looking alarmed.

“What is it?”

Yuuri pointed at him, then the water, then smacked his hands together.

“Oh, right. What do we do then?”

The structure shakes violently. Victor loses his balance and stumbled off the edge. Yuuri jumps after him without so much as a second thought, hugging him to his chest and curling around his fragile human body.

“Yuuri what are you doing?!”

Yuuri responds with a fierce look, and a tighter grip around his waist.

_You promised to stay by me. I’m doing the same for you._

“Yuuri, no!” Victor doesn’t have time to say anything else.

 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

_Agape_

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

 

Fifty feet down, and Victor begins to remember.

_My name is Victor Nikiforov._

_Yuri_ , his brother. Or Yurio as he likes to call him. This is why Yuuri’s name seems so familiar.

 _Mila and Georgi_. His best friends.

 _St Petersburg_. A place in Russia. He lives there. Well, at least he did before he vanished over a year ago.

 _Yakov, Lilia, Cristophe_ , his life floods back. He remembers everything, and it feels heavy.

 

Yuuri takes the full impact, and Victor screams as saltwater fills his eyes and lungs.

“YUURI!” He grasps wildly for him, finding his arm in the waves. He pulls him to the surface before being hit by another crashing wave. His lungs burn, his hair swirls around his face, his skin is scraped by debris and salt. The wave passes and Victor gasps for air.

“Yuuri?” He pat his cheek. Yuuri doesn’t respond. His skin flares in an alarming cerulean color from contact with the water. Silver stars dance across his skin in a frenzy, and Victor feels panic rise in his throat.

“Yuuri, Yuuri stay alive. Please don’t leave me.” Victor tries to keep their heads above the water, but the waves knock them over and send them tumbling through the ocean. His tears mix with the salt water, and he clings to Yuuri’s shoulders as the world goes dark.

_Please don’t leave my heart in pieces._

 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

_Freedom_

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

 

Yuuri is hit by the feeling of rough sand on his back instead of marble. He gasps, lurching forwards and coughing up the brine that stings his throat and stomach. After a couple of heaving breaths, he feels Victor’s arms wrap around him.

“Yuuri! You’re okay!”

“Vicchan!” The name flew out of his mouth in a raspy cough, shocking both him and Victor.

“…W-what did you just say?”

“Vicchan…” Yuuri repeats. “Victor. Vitya.”

“…Yuuri…”

Yuuri looks at his hands. They’re still dark and star spangled, but he feels free, like a pain he didn’t realize was there had faded. _Perhaps…_

He concentrates on relaxing. He hadn’t looked like this in centuries, but perhaps, if he could just let himself go…

He looks back at his hands. Olive brown. A set of paler ones wrap around his shoulders to to hold them.

“Victor, we made it.”

“We did, Yuuri.”

“I love you.”

“You don’t need to say it for me to know.”

“There are so many things I have to tell you.”

“Your voice is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.”

This time, instead of stars smattering his cheeks like freckles, a warm blush blooms.

“Where do we go now?” Victor asks

Yuuri thinks about it for a moment.

“Home.”

 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

_Afterwards_

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

 

“The tree. It’s roots must’ve been breaking through the marble and the reactor core after all these years.” Yuuri speaks in english. He hasn’t spoken at all in a couple centuries, so his speech is a bit muddled, but they’re getting there. “A long time ago, I planted it in the center. I never dreamed it would grow so large.”

“I don’t care why it collapsed. We’re free, and we’re together, and you can finally sing for me.” Victor replies, grinning. They’re sitting in Victor’s old home in St Petersburg. There’s a lot left to figure out, but the shock of managing to stay alive hasn’t worn off just yet.

“Hm, I haven’t sung anything in quite some time.” He murmurs. He recalls Phichit’s journals. They were lost in the rubble, following their author into the depths of the sea. 

 

Phichit Chulanont is finally free.

 

After a little while, Victor looks up at him and asks

“Are you going to try to find your people?”

Yuuri shakes his head.

“I can’t find them. There weren’t too many of us to begin with, and they were all much older than I.” he explained. “I spent most of my life trapped in that cell. So, with several decades left to live, I am the last of my kind.”

“I can’t possibly imagine how that must feel.” Victor traced his finger along his jaw. Yuuri took his hand and kissed it. 

“At least we get to grow old together.”

“You’re like, two hundred and thirty six, and you look almost my age.”

“I can change my skin to look like a wrinkly old human man, if you like.”

“Ha, perhaps not quite yet.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, it's weird, but I wanted to do this.
> 
> I didn't have anyone to beta, so forgive me for any mistake and plotholes, I tried :)


End file.
